A discussion about your motivations for playing poker.

Why Do You Play?

The simplest questions are sometimes very instructive. You can indulge hobbies for various reasons (not exclusive):

• fun;
• competition;
• feeling of accomplishment;
• recognition;
• social life;
• health;
• relaxation;
• kill time;
• escape from your problems, think to “something else”;

This list is not exhaustive, but summarizes well enough our general motivations. Health and relaxation do not really apply to poker, even though that’s arguable!

Playing For Fun

Poker is a game, and games are generally played for fun.

However, poker being a game played for money, it is sometimes perceived that acknowledging that you play “for fun” will immediately turn you, in the eyes of your peers, into a goldfish at the bottom of the food chain.

The same way never crying doesn’t make you man, saying that you play “for the cash of course” does not make you a strong player. There probably is the same kind of “macho” element in both arguments. What’s wrong with having fun? Do you play basketball, chess, table tennis, Trivial Pursuit for money? If for once you make small wagers during a game, do you all at once turn into a shark out to kill your friends? Gee.

Of course nobody likes being the fool of the party - but who said you would be? If you play with friends with the same motivations as yours, then no one is going to start looking down on you. Even if you do very poorly, you may get teased a bit, but that’s going to be good-natured if you have good friends.

If you play in a casino, even if you lose a bit, there’s nothing wrong with paying for a good evening. If the table is not fun, you leave anyway. Do you always feel like you have been ripped off when you go to the movie theater or to the restaurant?

The difference with the restaurant is obviously that you could have walked off with the money if you had played better. But you could have saved the restaurant check if you had cooked something at home - if you could cook. Everybody’s not disposed to learn cooking. Why not let people who are do their job, and pay them for the service? At the poker table, the job of the good players is to entertain the recreational players, by playing with them and providing a good gambling atmosphere. If they are good at it, they deserve the cash.

Now, if you are so hooked on good cuisine that you start spending lavishly in restaurants, then you would have better learning some cooking notions and Do It Yourself. Likewise, if you start playing poker on a regular basis, it is your best interest to try to improve your game.

Again, it’s a matter of goals.

Competition

Few things are more stimulating than healthy competition.

It gives you the thrill of fighting your way to the prize, and provides the opportunity to compare yourself with your fellow players, in a “measurable” way.

When it comes to poker, tournaments are the natural arena for competition. How you fare in a single event is usually not relevant, since so much luck is involved, but on the long term the best players will have much better results (ie. cash from prize pools) than their opponents.

The competitive player is usually eager to improve his game and use the time between events to good effect.

The pitfall, if there is one, is that competition is more demanding than playing for fun, and you run the risk of burning out when you don’t want to take the (self-inflected) heat anymore.

Feeling of Accomplishment

This can be a by-product of competition, but not necessarily, since it does not have to be result-dependent at all.

The motivation is to study the game in depth and move along the path toward mastery (as far as possible, that is!). This is a personal quest, and is not directly related to how we compare to others. However, they certainly are a source of inspiration.

Recognition

Being good at something is gratifying, and that’s sometimes what we need, especially if we have few occasions to get rewards, socially or professionally.

Poker is a game where education, manners, social class, country, age, and even money (provided you play with an adequate bankroll) are put aside, in favor of skills. This is true for many games, but few ones catch the interest of so many different people at the same table.

Therefore, when a modest worker beats a successful businessman, there is often more at stake than the cash, for the former at least. When a teenager beats a senior, this is a spit in the face of all the persons who failed to give them expected respect. This is something quite important when you have everything to prove but you believe you can do everything (who didn’t at this age?).

Social Life

Playing with people is certainly better for your social life than watching TV alone at home. This is something that comes into consideration for persons who retired, or don’t need to work.

They often play with the same players over and over, so they get to know each others and can become friends.

Poker may be a way to make “social contacts”, but they still play day in day out, so they generally develop some kind of skills, and may even become quite strong if they grow other motivations.

Kill Time

Poker can be or become a mere pastime, either if you have not a real taste for the game (yet), or if you “burnt out”.

You don’t devote much time to pastimes, so you are not in best position to improve your game, and you don’t have enough fun playing the game to consider spending the time to study it. No one can study every game!

Escape Hatch

Poker can provide a “fantasy world” where you do much better than in real life.
This is all the more true as every actor in this industry is delibarately selling you the same “magic”.

The game being already addictive, and with the prospect of easy money, it does not take more to turn a card game into a dangerous illusion.

The “terminal stage” of the runaway is probably to suddenly quit his job to go pro. An article is devoted to this topic.

And The Money?

Many of you have probably been asking why we have not talked about money yet.

This is because we would like to underline that it is only a side benefit of the game for many of us, in addition to being the way to “keep the score”.

In fact, money is often used as an excuse to overindulge one’s addiction. This is the link between one’s dream world and the harsh reality, supposedly validating our yielding to temptation.

There is of course nothing wrong with winning some bucks playing a game you like in a reasonable way. Even losing some bucks is fine, if it does not hurt your wallet. Money should neither be a white card to your pulsions nor a taboo.

If you play for money, like many players say they do, you are supposed to make strong compromises with the other motivations. Having fun is a secondary target, and feeding your ego is actually a serious distraction.

Do You Know Why You Play?

In fact, people claiming that they play for money is often a way to send to themselves an image corresponding to their values: seriousness, competition, intelligence… This does not mean that they all are fooling themselves, just that there can be a significant gap between our behavior and our perception of it. This is a generally accepted fact in psychology (and philosophy) that people do not have access to their inner motivations [Cf. Helvetius, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche…].

The same way we can get mad or fall in love without noticing it, while it appears clear to our family and friends, reading our real motivations may paradoxally be easier to our opponents than to ourselves.

And Do They Know?

As usual in poker, and arguably in life, knowledge enables exploitation. If you know your opponents’ motivations, you know what they like and what they don’t, and you can choose the appropriate carrot and stick to lead them where you want.

If someone claims playing for money, but appears to prefer feeding his ego, you have a decision to make as to which desire is the greatest at this very point. He may curb his ego if a decision could lead to a susbstantial loss, and if he could lose his face with a dubious move revealing his true motivations. On the other hand, a sligthly off-balance opponent is much more likely to yield to his pulsions, especially if they have been ruffled earlier.

We now have shifted to the art of manipulation, which we’ll discuss further in another article.

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